.44 



D I A R Y li 
OF A LITTLE felRl 
IN OLD NEW YOrI 



'i I 1 II 



1 



lii'l 



11 




Class JEi__£jiL_ 
Book.__^4_i_____ 

CiiEifRIGHT DEPOSI-n 



DIARY 
OF A LITTLE GIRL 
IN OLD NEW YORK 




AITIIOK AM) HER FATHER. I'rom a\ OLD 

• ;rafh taken- at Brady's l)A<;rEKREA.\ (iAi.r.ERV. 1( 
AXD Broadway, in 1847. 



DIARY 
OF A LITTLE GIRL 
INOLDNEVVYORK 



BY 
CATHERINE ELIZABETH HAVENS 



PUBLISHED By 

HENRY COLLINS BROWN 

15 East 40th Street 
New York 



■hiss 






COPYRIGHTED, 1919, H. C. BROWN 



J£C 



lyig 



Press of 
Tile Ciiauncey Hoi 
Company 



©CI.A5yG7i9 



TO MY 
DEAR NIECES AND NEPHEWS 

AND THEIR DESCENDANTS 

I DEDICATE THESE :ME:\I0IRS 

OF MY CHILDHOOD 



FOREWORD 

I THINK there are many New Yorkers wiio, 
like myself, have spent most of a lonji- life 
in this delio'htful old town, tliat love to <>'o 
back in memory to tlie quaint little eity of 
their childhood wliicli has so completely 
disappeared in the <>'reat metropolitan com- 
munity of to-day. 

Perhaps this little book which is a faith- 
ful record of events as seen by childhood 
eyes and recorded in childhood fashion 
may o-ive an hour or two of pleasure to old 
friends of the city far and near, and al- 
thouo'h they may not any more see the tree 
embowered streets of lono- a<i'o and the lit- 
tle two-story brick houses with theii' doi'- 
mer windows and slanting' I'oofs that used 
to line both sides of the street, tlie author 
hopes that these pag'cs may brino- back 
some of the scenes they were familiar with 
and help to renew, in spirit at least, some 
of the old friendships and affections tlicy 
enjoyed when the heart was youno-. 




DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD 
NEW YORK 

(1849-1850) 

August 6, 1849. 

I AM teu years old to-day, aud I am ♦i'oiug' 
to begin to keep a diary. ]\Iy sister says 
it is a good plan, and when I am old, and 
in a remembering mood, I can take out 
my diary and read about what I did when 
I was a little girl. 

I can remember as far l)ack as wlien I 
was only four years old, but I was too 
young then to keep a diary, but I will be- 
gin mine by telling what I can recall of 
that far-away time. 

The first thing I remember is going with 
my sister in a sloop to visit my aunts, Mrs. 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL I> OLD NEW YORK 

Deriii«>' and Mrs. L 'Hommedieu, on Shel- 
ter Island. We had to sleep two nights 
on the sloop, and had to wash in a tin 
basin, and the water felt gritty. 

These aunts live in a very old house. It 
was built in 1733 and is called the Manor 
House, and some of the floors and doors 
in it were in a house built in 1635 of wood 
brought from England.* 

The next thing I remember is going with 
my nurse to the Yauxhall Gardens, and 
riding in a merry-go-round. These Gar- 
dens were in Lafayette Place, near our 
house, and there was a gate on the Lafay- 
ette Place side, and another on the Bowery 
side. 

Back of our house was an alley that ran 
through to the Bowery, and there was a 
livery stable on the Bowery, and one time 



* Note — This house is now in possession of Miss 
Cornelia Horsford, of Cambridge, Mass.. and was 
the subject of an article by tlie late Mrs. INlartha J. 
i^amb, in the Xovembei- number of the Magazine 
of American History for 1887.— Editor. 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIUL IN OLD NEW YORK 

my brother, who was full of fun and mis- 
chief, got a pony from the stable and rode 
it right down into our kitchen and gal- 
loped it around the table and frightened 
our cook almost to death. 

Another time he jumped onto a new 
barrel of flour and went right in, boots 
and all. He was so mischievous that our 
luirse kept a suit of his old clothes done 
up in a bundle, and threatened to put them 
on him and give him to the old-clothes man 
when he came along. 

The beggar girls bother us dreadfully. 
They always have the same story to tell, 
that ''my father is dead and my mother 
is sick, and there's five small children of 
us, and nary a hapo." The hapo means 
money. 

They come down the steps to the kitchen 
door and ring the bell and ask for cold 
victuals; and sometimes they peek through 
the window into the basement, which is 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD XEW YORK 

my nursery. And one day my brother said 
to one of them, ' ' My dear, I am ver}^ sorry, 
but our victuals are all hot now, but if 
you will call in about an hour they will be 
cold. ' ' And she went away awfully angry. 

We moved from Lafayette Place to 
Brooklyn when I was four years old, but 
only lived there one year. My brother 
liked Brooklyn because he could go crab- 
bing on the river, but I was afraid of the 
goats, which chased one of my friends one 
day. So we came back to New York, and 
my father bought a house in Ninth Street. 
He bought it of a gentleman who lived next 
door to us, and who had but one lung, and 
he lived on raw turnips and sugar. Per- 
haps that is why he had only one lung. I 
don't know. 

I am still living in our Ninth Street 

house. It is a beautiful house and has 

glass sliding doors Avith birds of Paradise 

sitting on palm trees painted on them. 

6 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

And back of our dining room is a piazza, 
and a grape vine, and we have lots of Isa- 
bella grapes every fall. It has a parlor in 
front and the library in the middle and the 
dining room at the back. On the mantel 
piece in the library is a very old clock that 
my father brought from France in one of 
his ships. It has a gilt head of Virgil on 
the top, and it is all gilt, and stands under 
a big glass case, and sometimes I watch 
my father when he takes off the case to 
wind the clock, and he has to lift it up so 
high and his hands tremble so, I am afraid 
he will break it. 

Sometimes I think we shall never move 
again. I think it is delightful to move. 
I think it is so nice to sh\it my eyes at 
night and not to know where anything will 
be in the morning, and to have to hunt for 
my brusli and comb and my books and my 
et ceteras, but my mother and my nurse do 
not feel that way at all. 
7 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

We know a lot of our iicig'libors who live 
on Ninth Street. Down near Broadway 
lives Dr. DeWitt. He is a clergyman, and 
he and Dr. Chambers and Dr. Knox and 
Dr. Vermilyea take turns in preaching in 
the four Dutch Churches. On the corner 
of University Place lives Mr. James Brown, 
and above our church on the corner of 
Tenth Street is Mr. William H. Aspin- 
wall's house, and back of it he has a big 
picture gallery. On our block on Ninth 
Street, beginning at University Place on 
the upper side, is Mr. Jasper Grosvenor, 
and Mr. Aquilla Stout, and Mr. Cyrus Cur- 
tis, and Mr. Henry G. Thompson, and Mr. 
Gumming, and ]\Ir. Calvin G. How, and 
Dr. Borrowe. On our side of Ninth Street 
is Mr. Coddington and the Buckners, and 
on the corner across Fifth Avenue is a 
big open lot with a high board fence, and 
next beyond that lives ]\Ir. Quincy, and 
then Mr. George D. Phelps. Ever so many 
8 



niARY OF A TJTTKE CIRl. IN OLD NEW YORK 

of tlie e-hildreii of these neighbors come to 
our school. There is another school for 
girls on onr street, kept by Miss Sedgwick. 

I forgot to say I have a little niece, 
nearly as old as I am, and she lives in 
the country. Her mother is my sister, and 
her father is a clergyman, and I go there 
in the summer, and she comes here in the 
winter, and we have things together, like 
whooping-cough and scarlatina. Her name 
is Ellen and she is very bright. She writes 
elegant compositions, but I beat her in 
arithmetic. I hate compositions unless 
tliey are on subjects I can look up in books. 

Beside my little niece, I have a dear 
cousin near my age. Her father died in 
New Orleans, and her mother then came to 
New York to live. She brought all her six 
children with her, and also the bones of 
seven othei' litth' cliildren of liers, wlio had 
died in their infancy. Slie brought them 
9 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD Ts^EW YORK 

in a basket to put in the family vault on 
Long Island. 

I think spelling is very funny, I spelt 
infancy inf antsy, and they said it was 
wrong, but I don't see why, because if 
my seven little cousins died when they 
w^ere infants, they must have died in their 
inf antsy; but infancy makes it seem as if 
they hadn't really died, but we just made 
believe. I have three little sisters who 
died before I was born and they are buried 
in the Marble Cemetery, and one day 
Maggy took me to see their grave, and the 
cemetery has a high iron railing around 
it and we had to open a gate and walk 
through the long grass. The oldest child 
was named Anna, and she was seven years 
old, and she went with my oldest sister 
to Miss McClenahan's school, and she was 
taken sick in school and my sister brought 
her home, and she died in forty-eight hours 
of scarlet fever. 

10 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

My aunt and my cousins came to New- 
York tliree years ago. I was in my trun- 
dle-bed one nigiit and woke up and saw my 
mother putting on her hat and shawl, and 
I began to cry, but she told me to be a 
good girl and go to sleep, and next day 
she would take me to see some little cousins. 
So the next day she took me, but first we 
went to Mrs. May's toy store, just below 
Prince Street on Broadw^ay, to buy some 
presents for me to give to my three little 
girl cousins. They were living in a nice 
house in Bleecker Street, near McDougal 
Street, and are named Anna Maria and 
Eliza Jane and Sarah Ann. 

I took Anna a basket made by some of 
the people at the Blind Asylum. It w^as 
made of cloves strung on ware in diamond 
shapes, and where the wires crossed there 
was a glass bead. She keeps her big cop- 
per pennies in it. 

Anna is my dearest friend. She and I 
n 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

are together in school, but now they have 
moved way up to Fifteenth Street; but I 
walk up every morning- to meet her and we 
walk down to school together. 

Sometimes we get some of the big girls' 
books, and carry them in our arms, with 
the titles on the outside, so the people we 
pass will see them. I like to take Miss 
D's geometry. There is a Miss Lydia G. 
wlio goes to our school, and she is very 
sweet and beautiful, and one day our min- 
ister's son was walking to school with her 
and carrying her books, and I was just 
behind them and I saw him give her a 
beautiful red rose, and I guess he was 
making love to her and perhaps asking her 
to marry him, for she blushed when she 
said good-by. He is going to be a clergy- 
man like his father. I hope they will be 
happy. 

Saturdays I go up to Anna's, and on 
Irving Place, between Fourteenth and Fif- 
12 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD XEW YORK 

teeiith Streets, there is a rope walk, and 
we like to watch the men walk back and 
forth niaking" the rope. It is very inter- 
esting/ 

Some Saturdays we go to see our grand- 
mother, who lives witli our aunt on Abing- 
don Square, and she sends Bella her maid 
out to buy some candy for us, and she 
tells us about what she did when she lived 
way down town in Maiden Lane. She is 
our mother's mother. Anna's parents and 
my parents were married in the Maiden 
Lane house, and my father took my mother 
to his house at 100 Chambers Street to live 
with him. It was a handsome house, and 
before they were married, my father took 
out the wooden mantel pieces, and put in 
white marble ones to please my mother. 

My grandmother's mother lived in 
Fletcher Street, and she had a sister who 
lived on Wall Street, opposite the old 



1 The Academy of Music now stands where the 
rope walk was. 

15 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

Tontine Coft'ee-IIouse. They loved each 
other very much, and were both very sick 
and expected to die; but my great-grand- 
mother got up off her sick bed and went 
down to see her sister, and she died there 
an hour before her sister died, and they 
were buried together in their brotlier 
Augustus Van Horn's vault in Trinity 
Church Yard. I love to hear my grand- 
mother tell about these old times. She 
says Mr. R., who married her aunt, was 
a Tory; whicli means he was for the Eng- 
lish in the Revolutionary War. He was a 
printer and came from England, and Riv- 
ington Street was named for him. 

My father's father lived on Shelter Is- 
land, and had twenty slaves, and their 
names were : Africa, Pomp, London, Titus. 
Tony, Lum, Cesar, Cuff, Odet, Dido, Ziller, 
Hagar, Judith, and Comas, but my grand- 
father thought it was wicked to keep slaves, 
so he told them they covdd be free, but 
36 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIKL I.N OLD NEW YORK 

Tony and Comas stayed on with liini. 
After he died Tony and Comas liad a fi<>ht 
and Comas ent Tony, and my grandmother 
told Tony he must forgive Comas, for the 
Bible said "by so doing thou shalt heap 
coals of fire on his head," and Tony said, 
''Yes, Missy, de nex' time Comas hit me, 
I'll heap de coals ob fire on his head and 
burn him to a cinder." 

Tony and Comas used to make brooms 
out of the broom corn, and pound corn into 
samp, and send them to my father in New 
York by Capt. Mumford's sloop. 

New York is getting very big and build- 
ing up. 1 walk some mornings with my 
nurse before breakfast from our house in 
Ninth Street up Fifth Avenue to Twenty- 
third Street, and down Broadway home. 
An officer stands in front of the House 
of Refuge on Madison Square, ready to 
arrest bad people, and he looks as if he 
would like to find some. 
17 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

Fifth Avenue is very muddy above 
Eighteenth Street, and there are no blocks 
of houses as there are downtown, but only 
two or three on a block. Last Saturday we 
had a picnic on the grounds of Mr. Wad- 
dell's country seat way up Fifth Avenue,^ 
and it was so muddy I spoiled my new 
light cloth gaiter boots. I have a beauti- 
ful green and black changeable silk visite,'^ 
but my mother said it looked like rain and 
I could not wear it, and it never rained a 
drop after all. It has a pinked ruffle all 
around it and a sash behind. 

Miss Carew makes my things. She is an 
old maid, and very fussy, and Ellen and 
I don't like her. She wears little bunches 
of curls behind her ears, and when she is 
cutting out she screws up her mouth, and 
we try not to laugh, and my mother says 



2 Corner of Thirty-seventh Street and Fifth Ave- 
nue, where the Brick Church now stands. — Editor. 

3 A visite was a loose fitting, unlined coat. — 
Editor. 

18 



DIARY OF A T,ITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

Miss Carew is well bom and much thought 
of and only works for the best families. 

There is another person called Miss Piatt 
who comes to sew carpets, and although 
we don't despise her, which would be very 
wicked, for my mother says she comes of 
an excellent old Long Island family, yet 
Ellen and 1 don't like to have her use our 
forks and drink out of our cups. She is 
very tall and thin and has a long neck 
that reminds Ellen and me of a turkey 
gobbler, and her thumb-nails are all flat- 
tened from hammering down carpets, and 
she puts up her front hair in little rings 
and sticks big pins through them. Ellen 
and I try to pick out a nicked cup for her 
to use so that we can recognize it and avoid 
it. 

Mr. Brower makes my shoes and brings 

them home on Saturday niglit and stays 

and tries them on. My sisters go to C^ant- 

rell on the Bowery, near Bleecker Street. 

19 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIKL IX OLD XEW YORK 

One time Ellen came down to visit me, 
and we were both invited to a party at my 
sister's friend, Mrs. Downer's on 19th 
Street, and Ellen had not brought her slip- 
pers, and so my mother said I must wear 
my boots, so Ellen would not feel uncom- 
fortable. I did not want to, and asked my 
sister to persuade her to let me wear my 
slippers but she only said my mother was 
perfectly right, so I had to wear my boots. 

The wife of one of my brothers thinks I 
am too fond of pretty clothes, and she sent 
me a A^alentine about a kitten wanting to 
have pretty stripes like the tiger, and how 
the tiger told the kitten that she had a 
great deal nicer life than he did, out in 
the cold, and that she ought to be con- 
tented. I will copy it just as she wrote 
it. I don't know whether she made it all 
up, but she made up the verse about me. 
This is it : 

20 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD TS^EW YORK 

A kitte'u one day, 

111 a weak little voice 
To a ti<>er did say: 

"How much I rejoice 

"That I am permitted 

In you to beliold 
One of my own family, 

So great and so bold ! 

" I'd walk tifty miles, sir, 

On purpose to see 
A siji'ht so refresh iii<^' 

And pleasant to me ! 

"With your luay. striped dress. 

You must make a .ureat show, 
And be very much courted 

Wherever you g'o ! 

"Every beast, <i'reat and small. 

In the forest must say, 
'I wish I were a tiger. 

So showy and gay ! ' ' ' 

The tiger, half dozing, 

Then opened his eye, 
And thus to the kitten 

He deigned a reply. 

21 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

"You envious, foolish 

And weak little thing, 
Know that your size, like mine. 

Doth advantages bring. 

"Though you have not strength. 
Nor a gay, striped dress. 

You have comforts around 
I should love to possess. 

"Though I'm powerful and bold, 

I 'm the terror of all ! 
Alas! every one hates me 

And flees at my call. 

"You may be very useful 

By catching the mice ; 
Thus make the folks love you 

And give you a slice 

"Of the meat, and a place 

Nice and warm where to sleep, 

While, friendless and cold, 
I my wanderings keep ! 

"Now, envy no more 

Fine looks and gay dress. 

But strive to be useful. 
Make happy and bless 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

"The friends who *re around you 

By kindness and care, 
And you'll find in return 

Love and happiness there." 



Methinks you, my dear Kitty, 

My tale can explain ; 
If not, I'll unfold it 

When I see you again. 

August 15. 

I g'ot so tired doing- so inueli thinking 
and writing in my diary tliat I waited to 
think up some more to say. 

My fathei* is a very old gentleman. He 
was born before the Revolutionary War. 
I have three sisters who are nearly as old 
as my mother. AVe have the same father, 
but different mothers, so they are not quite 
my own sisters ; but they say they love 
me just the same as if we were own. Two 
of them got married and went a\vay to 
live wdth their husbands, but one whose 
23 



1)I\RY OF A LITTLE GIKL IX OLD XEW YORK 

name begins with C is not married. 1 
will call her Sister C in my diary. She 
has a school. She is educating me. 

I love my music lessons. I begau them 
when I was seven years old. Our piano 
is in the middle room between the parlor 
and dining-room, and my teacher shuts the 
sliding doors, and Ellen peeked through the 
crack to see what I was doiug, but she was 
only six years old. 

My teacher is very fond of me. Last 
year my sister let me play at a big musical 
party she had, and I played a tune from 
"La Fille du Regiment," with variations. 
It took me a good while to learn it, and 
the people all liked it and said it must be 
very hard. My mother has had all my 
pieces bound in a book and my name put 
on the cover. 

I love my music first, and then my arith- 
metic. Sometimes our class has to stand 
up and do sums in our heads. Our teacher 
24 



niAKY OF A LITTLE GIRL I\ OLD NEW YOUK 

rattles off like this, as fast as ever she can, 
"Twice six, less one, mnltiply by two, add 
eight, divide by three. How much?" I 
love to do that. 

I have a friend who comes to school with 
me, named Mary L. She lives on Ninth 
Street, between Broadway and the Bowery. 
She and I began onr lessons together and 
sat on a bench that had a little cnpboard 
nnderneath for our books. She has a 
nurse named Sarah. Sometimes Ellen and 
I go there and have tea in her nursery. 
She has a lot of brothers and they tease us. 
One time we went, and my mother told us 
to be polite and not to take preserves and 
cake but once. I^ut we did, for we had 
raspberry jam, and we took it six times, 
but the plates were dolls' plates, and of 
course my mother meant tea plates. My 
brother laughed and said we were tempted 
beyond what we were able to bear, what- 
ever that means. lie says it is in the Bible. 
25 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD XEW YORK 

I hate my history lessons. Ellen likes 
history beeanse she knows it all and does 
not have to stndy her lesson, bnt one day 
our teacher asked her to recite the begin- 
ning of the chapter, and she had only time 
to see there was a big A at the heading, 
and she thought it was about Columbus 
discovering America and began to recite 
at a great rate, but the teacher said, 
"wTong, " and it was about Andrew Mar- 
veil. Once a girl in our class asked our 
teacher if what we learned in history was 
true, or only just made up. I suppose she 
thought it was good for the mind, like 
learning poetry. 

We don't study spelling any more out 
of a spelling book. We use the "Scholar's 
Companion." It has a Latin word at the 
top and then the English words that come 
from it, like "Scril^ere" to write, and be- 
low it the noun "Scribe" and the verb to 
"Scribble." We study Brown's Gram- 
26 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD XEW YORK 

mar and it lias more than 28 rules and I 
know them all now. And we have finished 
'' Common thinos'' which tells ns about 
Science — why the steam comes out of the 
kettle, and what makes the clouds, and 
the rainbow, etc., and now we are going' 
into a harder book called "Familiar 
Science. ' ' 

I know a little g'irl who has a step- 
mother, and she has one own child, and 
this step-child, and she dresses her own 
child very prettily but she makes the step- 
child wear nankeen pantalettes, and when 
she plays in the Parade Ground, the boys 
tease her and call her ging-er legs, and she 
is very nnhappy. It is a very sad case. 

I meant to write about the time three 
years ago, when I went with my father to 
Brady's Daguerrean Gallery, corner of 
Tenth Street and Broadway, to have our 
picture taken. 

My father was seventy-four, and I was 
27 



DIARY OF A LITTIE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

seven. It is a very pretty picture, but peo- 
ple won't believe he isn't my oTandfather. 
He is sitting down and I am standing be- 
side him, and his arm is around me, and 
my hand hangs down and shows the gold 
ring on my fore-finger. He gave it to me 
at New Years to rememl)er him by. I wore 
it to church and took off my glove so that 
Jane S., who sits in the pew next to me, 
would see it, but she never looked at it. 
We introduced ourselves to each other by 
holding up our hymn books with our names 
on the cover, so now we speak. Ellen and 
I are afraid of tlie sexton in our church. 
He looks so fierce and red. 

Once in a while my sister takes me down 
to the Brick Church on Beekman Street, 
where our family went before I was born. 
We generally go on Thanksgiving Day. 
Dr. Spring is the minister. He married 
my parents and baptized all their children. 
Mr. Hull is the Sexton, and he puts the 

28 




The Brick Chukch, Blekmax a.nu .\a.-,.-,.au :-.i^., whkke 

OUR FAMILY WENT WHEN Dr. SpRING WAS MINISTER, AND 
WHERE MY PARENTS WERE MARRIED AND ALL THEIR CHIL- 
DREN BAPTIZED. 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

coals in the foot-stoves in the pews. Some- 
times the heat gives out and the lady gets 
up in her pew and waves her handkerchief 
and Mr. Hull comes and gets her stove and 
fills it again. When church begins he 
fastens a chain across the street to keep 
carriages away. 

A man used to stand in front of the 
pulpit and read two lines of the hymn and 
start the tune and all the people would 
sing with him. He had a tuning-fork, and 
used to snap it and it gave him the key 
to start the tune on, but that was before T 
was born. Afterwards they had a choir, 
and my mother and one of my sisters sang 
in it one time. 

We are a musical family, all except my 
f atlier ; but he went with my sister to hear 
Jenny Lind in Castle Garden, and when 
she sang, ''I Know That My Redeemer 
Liveth," the tears ran down his face. My 
sister took me too, and I heard her sing, 
31 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL I\ OLD XEW YORK 

"Comino- Thro' the Rye" and "John An- 
derson, My Joe," and a l)ird son^i', and she 
is called the Swedish Ni^htinoale, becanse 
she can sing' jnst like one. 

September 21. 

My parents went np to Saratoga in Aug- 
ust for two weeks, to driidv tlie water. 
They always stay at the Grand Union 
Hotel. Some time they will take me. It 
takes my mother a long time to pack, par- 
ticularly her caps. She has a cold that 
comes on the nineteenth day every August. 
She calls it her peach cold, and says it 
comes from the fuzz on the peaches she pre- 
serves and pickles.* It lasts six weeks and 
is very hard to bear. It makes her sneeze 
and her eyes run, and it is too bad, for 
she has sweet brown eyes and is very beau- 
tiful, and when she was a girl she was 
called "the pink of Maiden Lane," where 
she lived. 



4 Now known as Hay Fever. — Editor. 
32 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD XEW YORK 

This sumiiR'i* 1 went up to my sister's, 
my own sister, at Old Cliureii. Maggy, 
my nurse, took me in a earriage from 
Ilathorn's Livery Stable on University 
Place, to Catherine Slip on the East River, 
where we get into a steamboat — sometimes 
it is the Cricket, and sometimes the Cata- 
line — =and we sail up the sound to the 
landing Avhere we get off to go to Old 
Church, and then we get into the stage- 
coach to ride to my sister's parsonage. 1 
was so wild to get ihove and to see Ellen 
and the rest of them that I could hardly 
wait to have tlie driver let down the steps 
for me to get in, and put them up again. 

I just love it at Old Church. We play 
outdoors all day; sometimes in the barn 
and the hayloft, and sometimes by a brook- 
across the road behind a house where tliree 
ladies live who have never married, al- 
though they have a vine called Matri- 
mony on their porch, and they are very 
33 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

good to US children and let us run through 
their house and yard. On Sundays it is 
so quiet we can hear everything they say, 
and one morning we heard Miss E. say, 
''Ann, do you think it is going to rain? 
If I thought it was going to rain I would 
take my parasol, but if I thought it was 
going to shine I would take my parasol- 
ette." 

They have a brother Augustus and his 
wife Laura who visit them sometimes. 
They live in New York, and the sisters 
make a great time over their visit. Then 
they open their best parlor. It has a thin, 
big figured carpet on the floor, and straw 
put under it, to make it soft, I guess. One 
day a stranger came along and asked the 
way to Old Church, and Mr. Augustus 
said, "you are right in the heart of the 
city." And there are only a few houses. 
There is an old Capt. Reid who has a little 
house nearby, and he has a music box, and 
34 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIUL I.N OLD NEW YORK 

once in a great while we g'o there to hear 
it. The three sisters of Mr. Auo-ustus are 
Charlotte and Angeline and Eliza. Miss 
Charlotte is going- to be married. Miss 
Angeline has lost some of her teeth, and 
she keeps little pieces of wax on the man- 
tel piece, and sticks them in when com- 
pany conies. There are two big sqnare 
stools covered with black hair cloth in 
their parlor, and ever so many funny old 
daguerreotypes standing open on the man- 
tel piece. 

Every year there is a fair at the Land- 
ing, and of course the minister has to go, 
and so my sister goes too and takes us. 
There is an old wagon in the barn beside 
the carriage, and sometimes we all pile in 
wdth my nurse and my sister, and go down 
to bathe in the salt water. I wish w^e lived 
nearer to it and could go in every day. 

It is lovely on Sunday at Old Church. 
My brother-in-law is in the pulpit, and his 
35 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

pew is in the corner of the ehureli, and 
there are two pews in front of ns. On 
l)leasant days when the window is open 
behind us, we can hear the bees buzzing- 
and smell the lilac bush; and out on the 
salt meadows in front of the church, we 
sometimes, alas ! hear old Dan P. swear- 
in«^' awfully at his oxen as he is cutting his 
salt grass, which it is very wicked of liim 
to cut on tlie Sabbath. He has only one 
eye and wears a black patcli over tlie other 
one, and Ellen and I are afraid of him and 
run fast when we pass his house. A nice 
gentleman sits in front of us in church and 
brings little sugar plums and puts tliem 
on the seat beside him for Katy (Ellen's 
sister) to pick up, as she is very little and 
it keeps her (luiet. One time this gentle- 
man went to sleep in church, and his moutli 
was open and Katy had a rose in her lit- 
tle hand and she dropped it into his mouth, 
but he did not mind, because she was so 
cunning-. 

36 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

111 the front pew of the three a family 
of two parents and three sons and a daugh- 
ter sit. They are farmers, and tliey stomp 
up the aisle in their big hob-nailed boots, 
and the father stands at the door of the 
pew and slioves them all in ahead of him 
just as he shoos in his hens, and then he 
plumps himself down and the pew creaks 
and they make an awful noise. 

The people in Old Church are very dif- 
ferent from our church people in New 
York, but my sister says they are very 
kind and we must not make fun of them. 
Once a year they give her a donation 
party, and it is very hard for her for all 
the furniture has to be moved to make 
room for the people. They bring presents 
of hams and chickens and other things. 

I could write lots about Old Church and 

the good times I liave there. My sister's 

father-in-law is the Governor of the State, 

and sometimes he and his wife drive over 

39 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD .NEW YORK 

and spend the day with my sister and her 
husband, who is their son. Once when my 
sister called us to come and get dressed as 
they were going* to arrive soon, Ellen said 
to me, "You needn't hurry; he isn't your 
grandfather." She felt so proud to think 
he was the Governor. But my father is 
her grandfather too, and he is much finer 
looking than the Governor ; and my mother 
says she is very proud of my father for he 
stands very liigh in the community — what- 
ever that means. One time I was very 
angry with my father. It was about the 
Ravels. 



40 



October 1. 



I stopped to get rested a fortnight ago 
and then I forgot about my diary. 

I will now tell about the Ravels. They 
act in a theater, called Niblo's Theater, and 
it is corner of Broadway and Prince Street. 
My biggest OAvn brother goes there with 
some of his friends to see the plays, and 
he said he would take me to see the Ravels. 
But when my father found out about it 
he would not let me go. He said he did 
not think it was right for Christians to go 
to the theater. I went out on our front 
balcony and walked back and forth and 
cried so much I hurt my eyes. 

Now I must tell about this brother of 
mine, for he has gone away off to Cali- 
41 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

fornia. He went last February with five 
other young gentlemen. 

When he was twenty-one years old he 
joined a fire company, and it was called 
"The Silk Stocking Hose Company" be- 
cause so many young men of our best fam- 
ilies were in it. But they didn't wear their 
silk stockings when they ran with the 
engine, for I remember seeing my brother 
one night when he came home from a fire 
and he had on a red flannel shirt and a 
black hat that looked like pictures of hel- 
mets the soldiers wear. He took cold and 
had pain in his leg, and Dr. Washington 
came and he asked my mother for a paper 
of pins and he tore off a row and scratched 
my brother's leg with the pins and then 
painted it with some dark stuff to make it 
smart, and it cured him. 

Last year m.y brotlier had the scarlet 
fever. His room was on the top floor of 
our house, and when dear old Dr. Johnston 
42 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

came to see liim my mother felt sorry to 
take liim up so many stairs, but he said, 
''Oh, doctors and hod-carriers can go any- 
where." He lives on Fourteenth Street 
and his daug'hter comes to school with me. 

Last week my sister took me to see Helen 
R. who is very sick with scarlet fever. 
They thought she would die, and she was 
prayed for in school, and now she is getting- 
w^ell. We w^ent up in her room and she 
looked so funny in bed with all her liair 
cut off. She lives in Tenth Street. 

When my brother was a baby, before I 
was born, a cousin of my sister came from 
Buffalo to visit them in our house in 
Lafayette Place. She came by the Erie 
Canal, and after she arrived she w-as taken 
sick and the doctor said she had the small 
pox, and she got w^ell. It w^as very hot 
w^eather too. And nobody caught it from 
her. My sister says when we have a duty 
to do we wdll be carried through it, and 
43 



DIARY OF A LITTT-E GIRL IN 01.1) NEW YORK 

must not be afraid. All the servants left, 
and an old colored woman came to help 
who had had the disease. If you are vain 
enough to keep your hands from scratching 
your face, you won't be marked by it. I 
am sure I should be, for I wouldn't want 
to have my face all scarred up as long as 
I lived. 

Before my brotlier went to California, he 
wrote in my album, and this is what he 
wrote : 

"My sister, thou hast just begun 

To glide the stream of Time, 
And as it wafts thee onward 

Towards thy glorious youthful prime, 

"Oh, may the fleeting moments 
Which compose thy early years 

Be so improved that future days 
Will not look back in tears ! ' ' 

My album is a beautiful book, bound in 
pink kid. T begged one of my bi-others 
44 



1)1 AUY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YOUK 

(not own) for one, and he g'ave it to me 
and Avrote lovely poetry on the first page. 
I don't understand it all, but it sounds like 
music. I will copy it here in my diary : 

"Spotless is the page and bright. 
By heedless fingers yet untarnished; 

Ne'er the track of fancy's flight 
Has the virgin leaflet garnished! 

"Sweet the impress of the heart 
Stamp 'd in words of true affection ! 

This be every writer's part! 

Love give every pen direction ! ' ' 

October 15. 

My eyes are so bad that T could not write 
in my diary, and Maggy takes me to Dr. 
Samuel Elliott's, corner of Amity Street 
and Broadway, and he puts something in 
til at smarts awfully. He has two rooms, 
and all the people sit in the front room, 
waiting, and his office is in the back room ; 
and they have black patches over their eyes 

4;") 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

— some of them — and sit very quiet and 
solemn. On each side of the folding doors 
are glass cases filled with stuffed birds and 
I know them all by heart now and wish 
he would get some new ones. 

When I was four years old I had my 
tonsils cut out by Dr. Horace Green, who 
lives on Clinton Place. My nurse asked 
him to give them to her, so he put them in 
a little bottle of alcohol and sealed it up, 
and she keeps it in the nursery closet, and 
sometimes she shows it to me to amuse me, 
but it doesn 't, only I don 't like to hurt her 
feelings. My grandmother gave me a five- 
dollar gold piece for sitting so still when 
they were cut out. 
November 8. 

My diary has stopped on account of my 
eyes, and I have not studied much. 

Ellen is here, and we have had fun. We 
have been down to Staten Island to one of 
my sisters. She has ice cream on Thurs- 
46 



DIAEY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

days, so we try to go then. One day I ate 
it so fast is gave me a pain in my forehead, 
and my brother-in-law said I must warm 
it over the register, and I did, and it all 
melted, and then they all laughed and 
said he was joking, but they gave me some 
more. 

My brother-in-law is a dear old gentle- 
man, but he is very deaf. He has a lovely 
place and every kind of fruit on it, and 
there is a fountain in front with pretty 
fish in it. The farmer's name is Andrew, 
and when he goes to market, Ellen and 1 
go with him in the buggy ; and we always 
ask him to take us past Polly Bodine's 
house. She set fire to a house and burned 
up ever so many people, and I guess she 
was hung for it, because there is a wax 
figure of her in Barnum's Museum. 

Maggy takes us there sometimes, and it 
is very instructive, for there are big glasses 
to look through, and you can see London 
47 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX 01>n NEW YORK 

and Paris and all over Enrope, only the 
people look like giants, and the horses as 
big as elephants. Once we stayed to see 
the play. Maggy says whenever the statue 
on St. Paul's Church hears the City Hall 
Clock strike twelve, it comes doAvn. I am 
crazy to see it come down, but we never 
get there at the right time. 

My mother remembers when the City 
Hall was being built; and she and Fanny 
S. used to get pieces of the marble and 
heated them in their ovens and carried 
them to school in their muffs to keep their 
hands warm. She loves to tell about her 
school days, and I love to hear her. 
December 10. 

My eyes are better and I will write a 
little while I can. 

Ellen and I went out shopping alone. 

We went to Bond's dry-goods store on 

Sixth Avenue, just below Ninth Street, to 

buy a yard of calico to make an apron for 

4H 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

Maggy's birthday. We hope she will like 
it. It is a good quality, for we pulled the 
corner and twitched it as we had seen our 
mothers do, and it did not tear. Ellen 
and I call each other Sister Cynthia and 
Sister Juliana, and when we bought the 
calico, Ellen said, "Sister Cynthia, have 
you any change? I have only a fifty- 
dollar bill papa left me this morning," 
and the clerk laughed. I guess he knew 
Ellen was making it up ! 

Sometimes we play I am blind and Ellen 
leads me along on the street, and once a 
lady went by and said to her little girl, 
"See that poor child, she is blind," and 
perhaps when I get old I may be really 
blind as a punishment for pretending. 
But once Maggy was walking behind us, 
and she called out, ' ' Hurry, children, don 't 
walk so slow," only she always called us 
by our names out loud, Katy and Ellen. 
I don't think grown-up people understand 

51 



UIAUY OF A LITTLE GIKL IX OLD NEW YOUK 

what children like — we love to dress up in 
long frocks, and I guess all little girls like 
to, for my mother did. When she was 
about twelve years old she put on her 
mother's black lace shawl and walked out 
on Broadway in it, and her cousin, Katy 
Lawrence, met her in front of St. Paul's 
Church and saw the shawl dragging on 
the sidewalk and my mother looking be- 
hind to see if it dragged, and she told my 
grandmother about it, and my mother was 
punished. I know it was wrong, but it 
must have been lovely to think that it 
really dragged and that people were look- 
ing at it. I am afraid I should have for- 
gotten it Avas wrong, but I don't know, for 
we all have an inward monitor, my sister 
says. 

There is a bakery kept by a Mr. Walduck 

on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eightli 

Street, and they make delicious cream puffs, 

and when I have three cents to spare, 1 

52 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL I.X OLD NEW YORK 

run down there right after breakfast, be- 
fore school begins, and buy one and eat it 
there. 

On the corner of Broadway and Ninth 
Street is a chocolate store kept by Felix 
Effray, and I love to stand at the window 
and watch the wheel go round. It has 
three white stone rollers and they grind 
the chocolate into paste all day long. 
Down Broadway, below Eighth Street is 
Dean's candy store, and they make molasses 
candy that is the best in the city. Some- 
times we go down to Wild's, that is way 
down near Spring Street, to get his Iceland 
moss drops, good for colds. 

My mother says Stuart's candy store 
down on Greenwich and Chambers Streets 
used to be the store in her day. When she 
was a little girl in 1810, old Kinloch Stuart 
and his wife Agnes made the candy in a 
little bit of a back room and sold it in the 
front room, and sometimes they used to 
53 



DIARY OF A IJTTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

let my mother go in and stir it. After 
they died their sons, R. and L. Stuart, kept 
up the candy store in the same place, and 
it is there still. 

When my mother lived at 19 Maiden 
Lane, Miss Rebecca Bininger and her 
brother lived across the way from her, and 
they had a store in the front of their home 
and sold fine groceries, and their sitting 
room was behind the store. They were 
Moravians and they used to ask my mother 
sometimes to come over and sing hymns to 
them, and my mother says they were so 
clean and neat that even their pot-hooks 
and trammels shone like silver, and by and 
by Miss Rebecca would go into the store 
and my mother would hear paper rustling, 
and Miss Rebecca would come back and 
bring her a paper filled with nuts and 
raisins for a present. 

Sometimes my mother gives us a shilling 
to go and get some ice cream. We can get 
54 



1)1 AKV OK A I.n Tl.E GIKl. IN OLD NKW YORK 

a half plate for sixpence, and once Ellen 
dared to ask for a lialf plate with two 
spoons, and they ^-ave it to \is, but they 
laughed at us, and then we eaeh had three 
cents left. That was at Wagner's, on the 
other side of Broadway, just above Eighth 
Street. There is another ice cream saloon 
on the corner of Broadway and Waverly 
Place, called Thompson's. 

I hope Ellen will stay all winter. She 
is full of pranks, and smarter than I am 
if she is younger, and I hope we wdll have 
lots of snow. When there is real good 
sleighing, my sister hires a stage sleigh 
and takes me and a lot of my schoolmates 
a sleigh ride down Broadway to the Bat- 
tery and back. The sleigh is open and 
very long; and has long seats on each side, 
and straw on tlie floor to keep our feet 
warm, and tlie sleigh bells sound so cheer- 
ful. We see some of our friends taking 
55 



DIARY OF A I-ITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

their afternoon walk on the sidewalk, and 
I guess they wish they were in our sleigh ! 

Stages run through Bleecker Street and 
Eighth Street and Ninth Street right past 
our house, and it puts me right to sleep 
when I come home from the country to 
hear them rumble along over the cobble- 
stones again. There is a line on Four- 
teenth Street too, and that is the highest 
uptown. 

I roll my hoop and jump the rope in the 
afternoon, sometimes in the Parade Ground 
on Washington Square, and sometimes in 
Union Square. Union Square has a high 
iron railing around it, and a fountain in 
the middle. My brother says he remem- 
bers when it was a pond and the farmers 
used to water their horses in it. Our Ninth 
Street stages run down Broadway to the 
Battery, and when I go down to the ferry 
to go to Staten Island, they go through 
Whitehall Street, and just opposite the 
56 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL l.\ OLD NEW YORK 

Bowling Green on Whitehall Street, there 
is a sign over a store, ''Lay and Hatch," 
but they don't sell eggs. 







e 



c ^ o o c ) C O r> 9 ( ) c 3 (^ircyv. 




-January 2, 1850. 

Yesterday was New Year's Day, and I 
had lovely presents. We had 139 callers, 
and I have an ivory tablet and I write all 
their names down in it. We have to be 
dressed and ready by ten o'clock to re- 
ceive. Some of the gentlemen come to- 
gether and don 't stay more than a minute ; 
but some go into tlie back room and take 
some oysters and coffee and cake, and stay 
and talk. My cousin is always the first 
to come, and sometimes he comes before 
we are ready, and we find him sitting be- 
hind the door, on the end of the sofa, be- 
cause he is bashful. The gentlemen keep 
dropping in all day and until long after 
I have gone to bed ; and the horses look 



58 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIBL IN OLD NEW YORK 

tired, and the livery men make a lot of 
money. 

Mr. Woolsey Porter and his brother, Mr. 
Dwight Porter always come in the even- 
ing- and sit and talk a long time. They 
are very fond of one of my sisters. They 
keep a school for boys in 13th Street, and 
it is called Washington Institute, and one 
of my brothers goes to it. Mr. William 
Curtis Noges is another gentleman who 
always comes and stays awhile, and he 
calls us '' cousin," but we are not real 
cousins. 

Next January we shall be half througli 
the nineteenth century. I hope I shall live 
to see the next century, but I don't want 
to be alive when the year 2000 comes, for 
my Bible teacher says the world is coming 
to an end then, and perhaps sooner. 
January 14. 

My mother said she could not afford to 
get me another pair of kid gloves now, 
59 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

but my sister took me clown to Seaman 
and Muir's, next door to the hospital on 
Broadway, and bought me a pair. I like 
salmon color, but she said they would not 
be useful. Strang and Adriance is next 
door to Seaman and Muir's and we go 
there sometimes. 

We get our stockings and flannels at S. 
and L. Holmes' store, near Bleecker Street. 
They are two brothers and they keep Ger- 
man cologne. Rice and Smith have an 
elegant store on the corner of Waverly 
Place, and they keep German cologne too. 
We go sometimes to Stewart's store, way 
down on the corner of Chambers Street, 
but I like best to go to Arnold and Con- 
stable's on Canal Street, they keep elegant 
silks and satins and velvets, and my mother 
always goes there to get her best things. 
She says they wear well and can be made 
over for me or for Ellen sometimes. 

My Staten Island sister gave me a nice 
CO 




I'ORTI 



AIT OF LITTLK MiSS PlVMPTON AND HE. 

STYLE OK children's ATTIRE 

ERS. — Editor. 



SHOWING THE QUAIN 
DAYS OF OUR GRANDMOT 



DIARY OF A LITTLE C4TKL IN OLD NKW YORK 

silk dress, only it is a soft kind that does 
not rustle. I have a green silk that I hate, 
and the other day I walked too near the 
edge of the sidewalk, and one of the stages 
splashed mud on it, and I am so glad, for 
it can't be cleaned. 

On Canal Street, near West Broadway, 
is a box store, where my mother goes for 
boxes. They have all kinds, from beauti- 
ful big band boxes for hats and long ones 
for shawls, down to little bits of ones for 
children, and all covered with such pretty 
paper. 

Maggy, my nurse, is a very good woman, 
and reads ever so many chapters in her 
Bible every Sunday, and she said one day, 
"Well, Moses had his own troubles with 
these Children of Israel." I suppose she 
was thinking about the troubles she has 
with us children. I have a little bit of a 
hymn book that was given to one of my 
sisters (not ow^n) ''by her affectionate 
G3 



DIARY OF A LITTr,E GIRT- IX OLD NEW YORK 

mother." It was printed in 1811 and is 
called "The Children's Hymn Book," and 
some of the hymns are about children sleep- 
ing in church, and they are very severe, 
and I don't have to learn them, but Maggy 
teaches me some pretty verses sometimes 
to sing. I will copy down one of the hymns 
about sleeping in church. It is called ' ' The 
sin and punishment of children who sleep 
in the House of God. ' ' This is the hymn : 

Sleeper awake ! for God is here 
Attend his word, his anger fear; 
For while you sleep his eyes can see, 
His arm of power can punish thee. 

This day is God's, the day He blest. 
His temple this, His holy rest ; 
And can you here recline your head, 
And make the pew or seat your bed? 

Jehovah speaks, then why should you 
Shut up your eyes and hearing too? 
In anger He might stop your breath, 
And make you sleep the sleep of death! 
64 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

Dear children then of sleep beware! 
To hear the sermon be your care; 
For if you all God's message mind, 
For sleep no season will you find. 

Remember Eutychus of old, 
He slept while Paul of Jesus told ; 
In sleep he fell, in Acts 'tis said, 
That he was taken up for dead. 

Hear this ye sleepers and be Avise, 
And shut no more your slumbering eyes, 
For 'tis an awful truth to tell 
That you can never sleep in Hell ! 

There is another hymn called Hell, but 
my mother does not like me to learn it. 
She thinks it is too severe. We use the 
book "Watt's & Select" in our church, and 
I know lots of them. It is the University 
Place Church. There is one hymn I have 
learnt, and in it, it says : 

Like young Abijah may I see 
That good things may be found in me. 
65 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD ^'EW YORK 

and my sister says when she was a little 
girl and learned it, she always thongrht 
that when Abijah died, they cnt him open 
and found sugar plums in him. 

Sometimes when the sermon is very long, 
Ellen and I count the bonnets, to keep our- 
selves awake. She chooses the pink ones 
and I take the blue, and she generally gets 
the most, but some ladies wear lovely white 
ones of uncut velvet. Last winter I had 
a gray beaver, faced with cherry colored 
satin, and it had a row of narrow cherry 
colored satin ribbon rosettes like a wreath 
around it, and cherry colored satin strings 
to tie it under my chin, and I had a plaid 
woolen coat, and gray and white furs, and 
I left the muff in Randolph's book store, 
and when I went back for it, some one had 
taken it, and I never got it again. 
January 20. 

Last Sunday my mother let me go with 
Maggy to her church. It is called the 
66 



DIARY OF A LITT 



I.E (JIRI. IN Oil) NEW YORK 



Scotch Seceders' Church. Mr. Harper is 
the minister. The church is in Houston 
Street. In the pew were her father and 
mother. They live in Greenwich village, 
and once she took me there, and her mother 
gave me elegant bread and butter with 
brown sugar thick on it. 

Maggy has a sister married to a weaver, 
and his name is George Ross, and he is 
growing rich by buying land and selling 
it, and soon he is to be an alderman. Her 
other sister is Matilda, and she is my sis- 
ter's maid. Our other servants are col- 
ored people. The man waiter is colored, 
and we hear him asking our cook on Sun- 
day if she is going to Zion or to Bethel to 
church, and her name is Harriet White, 
but she is very black. 

We have a Dutch oven in our kitchen 

beside the range, and in the winter my 

mother has mince pies made, and several 

baked at once, and they are put away and 

67 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

heated up when we want one. My mother 
makes elegant cake, and when she makes 
rieh plum cake, like weddmg- cake, she 
sends it down to Shaddle's on Bleecker 
Street to be baked. 
January 25. 

This is my mother's birthday and my 
grandmother came to dinner. My mother 
is forty-nine to-day, and I hope she will 
live to be a hundred. She has a lovely 
voice and sings old songs, and plays them 
herself. 

She went to a big school in Litchfield 
kept by a Miss Pierce, but was only there 
three months. Her father thought it was 
too cold for her to stay there. While she 
was there she boarded at Dr. Lyman 
Beecher's and his wife died and her coffin 
stood below the pulpit, and he preached 
her funeral sermon, and my mother heard 
him. She says a Mr. Nettleton came there 
to preach once, and at breakfast he and 
68 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

Dr. Beecher had mii^^s of cider with pear- 
lash in it, and they heated a poker and 
put it in the cider to make it fizz. It must 
have been horrid. 

My oldest aunt went to Miss Pierce's 
school, and got acquainted with a young 
gentleman who was at Judge Gould's Law 
School in Litchfield, and she married him 
in 1811, and he became a clergyman, and 
Queen Victoria ordered him to come to 
Edinburgh to try to get an estate. That 
was in 1837. He took my aunt and their 
children and went away in a ship, and it 
took them ninety days to cross the Atlantic 
Ocean, and when they get the estate they 
will live in the castle, and my mother and 
I will go and visit them. 

My aunt was sixteen and my uncle was 
nineteen when they were married, and he 
was born in Beaufort in South Carolina, 
and had a good deal of money. I do hope 
they will live in the castle ! This is called 

69 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL I.N OLD NEW YORK 

a law suit they are having to get the estate. 

This aunt took dancing lessons when she 
was a girl of Mr. Julius Metz, and she 
danced the shawl dance, and was very 
graceful, and she and my mother took 
music lessons on the piano, of Mr. Adam 
Geib, and he played the organ in Trinity 
Church, and he and his brother, George 
Geib, sold pianos. A young lady in Edin 
burgh told one of my Scotch cousins that 
she supposed all the Americans were cop- 
per colored, and he said, "Well, you know 
my father is a Scotchman, so that is why 
I am white." 
February 14. 

I have had a lot of Valentines to-day. 

Once when I was six years old I teased 
one of my brothers (not own) for a valen- 
tine, and he sent me one written on a sheet 
of Icjvely note paper with a rose bud in 
the corner. It is pretty long to copy, and 
70 



DIAKY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OT,D .NEW YORK 

1 don't know all it means, bnt it sounds 
tinkly, like music. This is it : 

Little Kitty one day, 
In her wheedling way, 
With her kisses and cmiles 
And twenty such wiles, 

Did a valentine request ; 
That somehow or other 
My brain I should bother 
And verses indite 
In stupidity's spite. 

To comply with her simple behest. 

Now, thoug'h it may seem 

But a trifling affair 
To fill up a ream 

Of paper so fair 

AVith words that will jingle in rhyme, 
Yet to put them together 

In proper connection 
And give them a meaiiing 

And useful directioji 

Wit is quite as essential as time. 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

And here, little Kitty, 

Will please to observe 
That speech, to be witty, 

Must ever deserve 

The aids of reflection and sense ; 
And careless, gay prattle 

And voluble talk. 
Though making much rattle 

Will scarcely be thought 

Very witty or worthy defense ! 

But as verse that is fired 

With passion and truth. 
From a fancy inspired 

By beauty and worth, 

Hath a charm that no heart can resist, 
So the thoughts of a mind 

That's calm, clear and pure. 
When they utterance find. 

In words plain and sure. 

Are generally reckoned the best! 

This brother is a lawyer, and now he 
has gone to California too, to a place called 
Eureka. He has a lovely voice, and so 
72 



DIAKY OF A L1TTI,E GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

has 1113' own brotlier too, who went to Cali- 
fornia hist year, and they used to sing 
rounds with my sister. 

When my mother sings one of her songs, 
she has to cross her left hand over her 
right on the piano to play some high notes, 
and make what my teacher says is "a 
turn," and it is beautiful. This song is 
called "The Wood Robin," and another 
one begins, "Come, rest in this bosom, my 
own stricken deer." My mother knows 
ever so many songs, and some of them were 
sung before she was born. One of them 
is called "The Maid of Lodi," and another 
is "The Old Welsh Harper," and another, 
"A Social Dish of Tea," and a lot of 
others. 
April 12. 

I have a school mate who lives across the 

street, and her name is Minnie B. Her 

father is a doctor, and she has a brother, 

Sam, and he is fifteen years old and big, 

73 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL I\ OLD NEW YORK 

and to-day I ran over to see her, and Sam 
opened the front door, and when he saw 
me, he picked me np in liis arms to tease 
me, bnt he didn't see liis aunt Sarah who 
was coming" downstairs, and when she saw 
him she was very severe, and said, '^ Sam- 
uel, put tliat child down right away, and 
come and eat your lunch/' I don't dis- 
like Sam, but I think he was very rude to- 
day, and I am glad his aunt Sarah made 
him behave himself. 

Minnie B. and Lottie G., who live on 
the corner of University Place and Ninth 
Street, and Mary P., who lives on Ninth 
Street across Fifth Avenue, and I have a 
sewing society, and we sew for a fair, but 
we don't make much money. 

But four years ago there Avas a dreadful 
famine in Ireland, and we gave up our par- 
lor and library and dining room for two 
evenings for a fair for them, and all my 
schoolmates and our friends made things. 



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lELD 1\ our library FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE IrISH 
•AMIXE SUFFERERS. 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

and we sent the poor Irish people over 
three hundred dollars. My brothers made 
pictures in pen and ink, and called them 
charades, and they sold for fifty cents 
apiece ; like this : a pen, and a man, and 
a ship, and called it, "a desirable art" 
Penmanship. The brother who used to be 
so mischievous, is studying hard now to 
be an engineer and build railroads. He 
draws beautiful bridges and aqueducts. 

One Fourth of July, my father got a 
carriage from Hathorn's stable and took 
my mother and my sister and my brother 
and me out to see the High Bridge. It is 
built with beautiful arches, and brings the 
Croton water to New York. My brother 
says he remembers riding to the place 
where the Croton aqueduct crossed Har- 
lem River by a syphon before the Bridge 
was built, and the man who took charge 
of it opened a jet at the lowest point, and 
sent a two-inch stream up a hundred feet. 
77 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD TSEW YORK 

My mother says when she was young, 
everybody drank the Manhattan water. 
Everybody had a cistern for rain water for 
washing, in the back-yards. And when 
she lived in Maiden Lane, the servants had 
to go up to the corner of Broadway and 
get the drinking water from the pump 
there. It was a great bother, and so when 
my grandfather built his new house at 19 
Maiden Lane, he asked the aldermen if he 
might run a pipe to the kitchen of his house 
fi'om the pump at the corner of Broadway, 
and tliey said lie could, and he had a 
faucet in the kitchen, and it was the first 
house in the city to have drinking water 
in it, and after that several gentlemen 
called on my grandfather and asked to see 
his invention. My mother says the Man- 
hattan water was brackish and not very 
pleasant to drink. 

My grandfather had ships that went to 
Holland and he brought skates home to 
78 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

his children, and they used to skate on 
the Canal that is now Canal Street and on 
the pond where the Tombs is now, and my 
mother says that the poor people used to 
get a rib of beef and polish it and drill 
holes in it and fasten it on their shoes to 
skate on. The Canal ran from Broadway 
to the North River, and had a picket fence 
on both sides of it, and there were only 
three houses on its side, and they were 
little white wooden houses with green 
blinds. My grandfather used to tell his 
children that whichever one would be up 
early enough in the morning could ride 
with him before breakfast in his gig as far 
as the stone bridge, and that was the bridge 
at Canal Street and Broadway. 

My grandfather bought the lot for his 
new house from Mr. Peter Sharp, the father 
of my mother's schoolmate, Fanny. The 
lot was 28 feet wide, but the house was 
only 25 feet wide, and there was an alley 
81 



DIAKY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

3 feet wide that was used by the shop peo- 
ple to get to the kitchen at the back of the 
house. 

This Mr. Sharp was an alderman and he 
w^as a Democrat, and my grandfather was 
a Federalist, and they used to exchange 
their newspapers so as to read both kinds, 
and sometimes when my mother was wait- 
ing for Fanny to go to school, at her house, 
Mr. Sharp would throw down the paper 
and say a very wicked word about the Fed- 
eralists. Another alderman is Mr. John 
Yates Cebra, a cousin of my mother's. He 
lives on Cebra Avenue on Staten Island, 
and once I went there with my sister in 
her barouche and the grays. The grays 
are beautiful horses. 
May 15. 

I meant to tell in my diary that my sis- 
ter taught me to sew^ when I was five years 
old, and to darn little holes in a stocking, 
and sli(^ tliought I was funny to want to 
S2 



DI 



^RY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YOUK 



do the biggest hole first, but I did, so as 
to get done with it. She gives me the 
skeins of sewing silk to wind, and I love 
to get the knots out of them. 

When my mother was a little girl she 
used to go from her house at 84 Beekman 
Street to Fletcher Street every Saturday, 
to stay over Sunday at her Grandfather 
Cebra's, but before she went she had to 
do some hemming in the morning and do 
it neat and nice, or her mother would rip 
it out and make her do it over again. Her 
Aunt Peggy lived with her grandfather, 
and when she took my mother out to walk, 
there were only four policemen in New 
York then, and they were called Constables. 
They carried a stick like a broomstick, 
painted white and going up to a gilt point 
with a blue ribbon at the top, and they 
knew who everybody was, and used to say, 
^'Good evening, Miss Peggy, and how is 
your father to-night ?" My mother's 
83 



DIAKY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

grandfather was an episcopalian, and had 
a pew in Trinity Church, and it was so 
cold that her Aunt Peggy carried a big 
martin muff and put my mother's little 
feet in it to keep them warm. And she 
remembers old Bishop Hobart, and says he 
wore his hair in a queue, and spectacles 
with big brown wooden rims. But my 
mother's father was a presbyterian and 
went to the Brick Church, and he joined 
it when he saw some poor black men go up 
to the communion table while he sat still 
in his pew, and he felt he was very wicked. 
He died in 1817, and a Mr. Jarvis came 
and took a plaster cast of his face and then 
painted a portrait from it, and my Aunt 
took it with her when she went to live 
in Edinburgh in Scotland. Mr. Jarvis 
painted portraits of my cousin Annie's 
father and mother too in New Orleans. 

My grandfather had a ship called the 
Snow, and he used to tell people he had 
84, 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD XEW YORK 

seen Snow in June more than three feet 
deep, and they thought he meant a snow 
storm, and they wouldn't believe him, but 
he only meant his ship. He was full of 
fun. My own father had ships, too, as well 
as my mother's father. And he gave some 
of his ships to our Government for them to 
use in the War of 1812, And one of them 
was called the General Armstrong, and 
the Captain was Samuel Chester Reid. 
And he was a very brave man, and he 
took his ship into the harbor of Fayal in 
the Azores Islands, to get some drinking 
water, and three British ships saw our 
ship and they fought us, and when Cap- 
tain Reid saw he could not beat them be- 
cause they had so many more men and 
guns than he had, he sank the General 
Armstrong, and all this fight kept the 
British from getting to the Gulf of Mex- 
ico in time to help the ships that were 
waiting for them, and so the fight helped 
85 



DIAKY OF A LITTLE GIKL IN OLD NEW YOHK 

to bring the War of 1812 to an end. This 
is all told in our Ameriean History book. 
And my father ought to be paid money by 
our government, and lie sent Captain Reid 
to Washington to try to get it a few years 
ago, but President Polk woukl not let him 
have it — but they gave Captain Reid a 
sword because he Avas so brave. 



86 



July 15. 

I have not written in my diary for ever 
so long, bnt now school has just closed foi' 
the summer, and I have more time. 

We had a new study last winter, some- 
thing to strengthen our memories. The 
teacher was a Miss Peabody from Boston, 
and she has a sister married to a Mr. Na- 
thanial Hawthorne, who writes beautiful 
stories. 

We had charts to paint on, and stayed 
after school to paint them, and one-half of 
the page was a country and the other half 
was for the people who lived in that coun- 
try, and the country was painted one color, 
and the people another color, and this is 
the wav it will help us to remember; for 
^7 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

Mesopotamia was yellow, and Abraham, 
who lived there, was royal purple, and so 
I shall never forget that he lived in Meso- 
potamia, but I may not remember after all 
which was yellow, the man or the country, 
but I don't suppose that is really any mat- 
ter as long as I don't forget where he lived. 
We did not study it long, but it was fun 
to stay and paint after school. 

Professor Hume teaches us natural 
science, and every Wednesday he lectures 
to us, and one day he brought the eye of 
an ox and took it all apart and showed us 
how it was like our own eyes. And an- 
other time he brought an electric battery, 
and we joined our hands, ever so many of 
us, and the end girl took hold of the 
handle of the battery, and we all felt the 
shock, and it tingled and pricked. 

Sometimes he talks on chemistry, and 
brings glass jars and pours different things 
into them and makes beautiful colors. He 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

told US we could always remember the 
seven colors of the rainbow by the word, 
V i b g y o r. 

Professor Edwardes has been teaching us 
French. He is a little bit of a man, with 
a big head, and gray hair and a broken 
nose, and when he recites one of La Fon- 
taine's Fables, he says, "L 'animal vora-a- 
ace," and rolls up his eyes until you can 
only see the whites of them. Mr. Roy 
comes from the Union Seminary on Uni- 
versity Place, to teach us Latin. 

Mr. Dolbear used to teach us writing, 
but now we have Mr. Hoogland. He wears 
blue spectacles and is very kind, and some- 
times gives us 4 which is the mark for 
perfect, when we don't deserve it. One 
day he was behind a row of desks next to 
the wall, and one of the girls pulled the 
chair out from under him, and down he 
went between two desks. It was a very 
cruel thing to do, but perhaps she did not 
89 



UIARY OF A LITTLE (URL IN OLD NKW YOKK 

mean to, but I'm afraid she did. I won't 
tell her name. Both ]\Ir. Dolbear and Mr. 
Hoogland can take their pen and make a 
few flourishes, and it will be a beautiful 
swan or an eagrle on the outside of our 
copy books. 
August 6. 

This is my birthday again, and I am now 
eleven years old. School will begin again 
in September and so I will Avrite some more 
in my diary while I have time. 

I think I will tell about the school my 
mother went to. 

The first school she went to was in P'air 
Street, and that is now Fulton Street, east 
of Broadway. It was kept by a Mrs. Mer- 
rill, an old lady who took a few little chil- 
dren, and each child brought her own lit- 
tle chair. 

Then my mother went to Mr. Pickett's, 
and she says that was the school of that 
time. He had two sons who taught in 
90 



DIAKY OV 



' A Lirrr.K oiui. in ()||> m'w voui 



the school. I will tell about it nnst as she 
has written it down for me. 

-The scliool at first was at 148 Cham- 
bers Street, on the south side near Green- 
wich Street. Mr. Pickett's residence was 
in front and the school buildings were in 
the yard behind, running- up three stories, 
with a private side entrance for the schol- 
ars, and a well in the yard. The house 
was brick, painted yellow, but the school 
buildings were of wood. The first and sec- 
ond floors were for the boys, and the third 
for the girls, beautifully fitted up, and 
hardwood floors. On the wall in the four 
corners of the girls' room were oval places 
painted blue, and on them in gilt letters 
were inscribed, Attention, Obedience, In- 
dustry, Punctuality. Mr. Pickett's desk 
was in the center of the room. The desks 
were painted mahogany color, and put m 
groups of four, facing each other. Wooden 
benches without backs were screwed to the 
91 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

floor. On top of the desks were little 
frames with glass fronts for the copies for 
writing, and the copies were slid in at the 
sides. Some of them were, Attention to 
study. Beauty soon decays, Command your- 
self, Death is inevitable, Emulation is 
noble. Favor is deceitful, Grood Humor 
pleases, et cetera. Quill pens were used, 
which Mr. Pickett made himself." 

Some of the girls who went to school 
with my mother had awfully funny long 
names. One was Aspasia Seraphina Imo- 
gene and her last name was Bogardus. 

She had ten brothers and sisters, and 
these were some of their names : IMaria 
Sabina, Wilhelmina Henrietta, Laurentina 
Adaminta, Washington Augustus, Alonzo 
Leonidas Agamemnon, Napoleon LePerry 
Barrister. There were eleven children, 
and their mother named them after people 
she had read about in novels. It must 
92 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

have been funny to hear their nurse call 
them all to come to dinner. 

My name is Catherine Elizabeth. I 
don't like it very much. It makes me 
think of Henrietta Maria and Marie An- 
toinette and all those old queens with long 
names we study about in history, but my 
mother calls me Katy, and sometimes 
Katrintje, which is the Dutch lor "little 
Katy." 

Some other schools in New York now 
are Mme. Cauda s on Lafayette Place, Mme. 
Okill's on Eighth Street, Mme. Chegary's, 
the Misses Gibson on the east side of Un- 
ion Square, Miss Green's on Fifth Avenue, 
just above Washington Square, and Sping- 
ler Institute on the west side of Union 
Square, just below Fifteenth Street. On 
the corner of Fifteenth Street next to 
Spingler Institute is the Church of the 
Puritans. Dr. Cheever is the minister, and 
he and the church people are called a long 
93 



DTAKY OF A l-iriLK GIRL IN OLD NEW YOKK 

name, which means that they think slavery 
is wicked, and they help tlie black slaves 
that come from the South, to get to Canada 
where they will be free. 

N. B. — My mother has read my diary and 
corrected the spelling, and says it is very 
g'ood for a little girl. She has written 
down her memories of old New York, for 
me, and she was born in 1801, and can 
remember back to 1805, some things. 



94 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK 

RULES OF MY SISTER'S SCHOOL 
FOR YOUNG LADIES 

These rules were read aloud to the assembled 
scholars— from 80 to 90 in number usually— 
once a year only, at the opening of the school in 
September. — Editor. 

1. Every young lady must be in her 
seat at 9 o'clock with the Bible in her hand, 
in readiness for the opening exercises of 
the school. Each one should bow her head 
in a reverential manner during prayer. 

2. Each scholar is desired to familiar- 
ize herself with the course of study, that 
immediately after the opening of the 
school, she may commence preparation for 
her first recitation. All unnecessary ques- 
tions both to teachers and scholars may 
thus be avoided. 

3. All talking and laughing, note writ- 
ing, conversation by signs, eating, and 
leaving of seats, are entirely forbidden 
during study and recitation hours. 
97 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

4. Loud conversation, romping, or rude- 
ness of manner must not in any ease be 
indulged in, during the recess. This rule 
applies also to entering the house in the 
morning and leaving it after school. 

5. Perfect neatness in person is ex- 
pected of every young lady. No papers or 
crumbs must be thrown upon the floor. 
No pencil or other marks must be made 
upon any part of the house. Desks must 
not be cut or injured by marks or other- 
wise, and they must be arranged in per- 
fect order. Books should be carefully cov- 
ered and carefully used, and not left to 
lie upon the outside of the desk at any 
time. 

6. Tn passing to recitations the young 
lady who sits nearest the door will go first, 
and in returning the same rule will be 
observed. 

7. No tardiness at school, or failure in 



,„.,„v OK A ...TTi.K r.mi, .N oi.n nkxv vobk 

lessons, will be excused, or permission 
given to leave before the close of school, 
except by a \vritteu )iotc from one of the 
parents of the younfi lady. 

S. For every perfect U'ssou the scholar 
will receive four good marks. Two entire 
failures in answering, or general imper- 
fect answers, will incur a forfeit mark. 

9 Good marks will be given for punc- 
tuality, neatness, order, and general ex- 
cellence, and disgrace marks will be m- 
curred for tardiness, disorder, iniproper 
naanners, deficiency in studies, and want 
of amiability. 

10. At the end of each month, the marks 
will ))e counted so that each one may know 
her standing in her classes. Reports will 
then be sent to the parents. 

11. School will close at a few minutes 
before 2 o'clock, and when the bell is rung, 
the youn^ ladies may arrange their books 

99 



DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IX OLD NEW YORK 

silently for leaving, and remain at their 
places until they receive permission to 
leave, and then the young lady who sits 
nearest the door in each class may lead 
the way. 

12. Finally, we desire that the rules of 
politeness and good breeding observed in 
the best regulated society, will uniformly 
be practiced here. And as the Bible is 
the great rule of duty, for both teachers 
and scholars, so it is hoped that that truth 
and virtue and christian kindness and 
courtesy, which it inculcates, will, at all 
times, be the governing principle of con- 
duct to all the members of this school. 



100 



DIAKY OF A LITTLE GIUL IN OLD NEW YORK 

THE WOOD ROBIN 
A Song of the Eio'liteenth Century 

8tay, sweet enelianter of the grove, 
Jjeave not so soon thy native tree, 

Oh, warble still those notes of love. 
While my fond heart responds to thee ! 

Rest thy soft bosom on the spray, 
Till chilly Autumn frowns severe. 

Then charm me with thy parting lay, 
And T will answer with a tear. 

But soon as Spring, enriched with flowers. 

Comes dancing o'er the new drest plain. 
Return and cheer thy native bowers. 

Mv robin, with thv notes again ! 



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